Aphorisms

Occasionally I come across a pithy comment that I find engaging, pleasurable, or even useful. Enjoy!

Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.Benjamin Disraeli

We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.Elie Wiesel

Anyone can succeed. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will always think itself a failure.Anon.

If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.Michael Dell

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.Ben Franklin

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.Mike Tyson

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.Ernest Hemingway

When I was 5 years old, my mother told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to bewhen I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment. I told them they didn’t understand life.Nick Offerman

Courage does not always roar. Sometimes it is that little voice at the end of the day that says: I’ll try again tomorrow.Mary Anne Radmacher

It is not incumbent upon you to complete the great task, but neither are you free to desist from it.Mishnah: The Ethics of the Fathers

The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.Stephen McCranie

Give to everyone who begs from you. And if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.Do to others as you would have them do to you. For if you only love those who love you, what credit is there in that?Jesus in the Gospel of Luke

The greatest form of charity is that gift which enables another to become self-sufficient.Maimonides

Kindness is a mark of faith. Whoever has not kindness has not faith.Muhammad

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force.Too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others.Bobby Kennedy

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

Adam was created alone in the world to teach us that whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.The Mishnah

The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.President Abraham Lincoln (R)

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.Leo Tolstoy

One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words. It is expressed in the choices that one makes.Elenor Roosevelt

Judges shall render just decisions for the people. You must not distort justice, show partiality, or accept bribes. Justice! Justice you shall seek.The Torah

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed… The cost of one modern heavy bomber is a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.President Dwight Eisenhower (R). Supreme Allied Commander, World War II.

If you can keep your head when all around you are losing theirs,If you can trust yourself when everyone doubts you,While making allowance for their doubting too;If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken twisted by fools,If you can build the things back up they’ve broken,And wait without tiring, and be hated without hating;If you can talk with crowds while keeping your virtue,If you can walk with kings without losing the common touch,Then yours will be the earth — and everything in it.